


red

by saraheli



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 10:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14789150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saraheli/pseuds/saraheli
Summary: It was meant to be a test. Meant to prove her to her family and her superiors, meant to be a new shining incarnation of desire, meant to bring about a new age of dignity to human sexuality. Not meant, however, to partake in it. Not meant to take advantage of it. Not meant to taste and love it. Not meant to stay forever.





	red

Delicious. **  
**

That’s the word you chose. That’s the word that made you both do something so mind-numbingly stupid that would send shockwaves through the solar systems and all of its outskirts; it would threaten to cut open your skin and replace your veins with lighting.

But what else could you say? The drink was so good, and she was so beautiful.

Her hair painted her glow platinum, and her red lips closed softly around the head of a straw for her drink. She was alone and innocent, but you could tell that there was something more than you could glean from between the bats of her lashes.

“Kim Jungeun,” she had said quietly when she noticed your gaze, “That’s my name.”

You gave her yours in return and she nodded, her pearly smile revealing itself for the first time before she asked you the question that would pluck your heartstrings from your chest and the violet bruises from under your eyes.

“How’s the tequila?” 

* * *

_“You have a lot of vinyl,” she chuckled, picking up one of the albums to spin it whimsically in her hands, “You must get all the girls in here, huh?” You knew she was joking from that little grin that painted her pretty pink lips, but her voice revealed nothing._

_“Not really,” you came to stand beside her, just close enough so that you could feel that electric heat that radiated from the skin underneath that red satin she wore. “I don’t bring girls back here often.”_

_She raised her eyebrows at your admission, “So what makes me so special then?”_

* * *

That night had been the first of many coincidences that led you back to her. You met her just as she was flitting out between the blinds of your memory, just as you were going to forget her, just as you were about to let her go regarded as nothing more than a dream, there she was again.

“Oh, hello,” her smile almost turned you into a puddle on the floor of this cafe. “How have you been?”

You cleared your throat, “I’ve been fine.”

 

“I imagine you have been,” her grin brightened and dragged you up so high that you thought you might float, “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“No you haven’t,” you laughed.

“I have,” she licked her lips and took a step towards you, “I can prove it to you if you want. Maybe over this cup of coffee?” 

* * *

_“You cannot be with any of them, remember that, Jungeun.”_

_That was what her mother had said before she was cast down to live amongst men. Thrown away from the heavens to prove herself, Jungeun was to teach someone how to love again. She was not to learn herself. She was not to be had by a mortal, and she was certainly not meant to be kept by one._

_“You have big shoes to fill, but you also have a lot of downfalls to correct. Eros was not a wise man.”_

_She was supposed to teach the world below the sky tenderness, not feel it melt against her lips and glisten there. She was not supposed to fall in love with you._

_“I know, I know,” she stared out onto the pink sunset clouds, “I won’t let you down. I promise.”_

_The day had finally come. She had waited so long for her shot, and now that it was here, she had to admit that she was afraid. Failure could come to her in so many shapes and colors; she couldn’t possibly succeed without facing one of them head-on, and she didn’t._

* * *

“What do I taste like?”

You could list a thousand things. They fought each other as she giggled at your hesitation. You could have told her the strawberry of her lip gloss or the sting of tequila. You could have said something stupid, too. You could have told her that she tasted like late nights and even later mornings. None of those stupid things would have been lies, but they wouldn’t quite have been the truth.

You kissed her for the second time then, planning to make the excuse of reminding yourself if she had pushed you away, but she did not. She just yelped quietly and moved with you like she knew she shouldn’t. She tasted like surprising hesitation tinged with sweet liberation. She tasted like belonging, and she tasted like tenderness. She tasted like all of the things you needed and like all of the things she was merely meant to crave.

But here she was, letting herself be tasted by someone she had met earlier that same evening. This was not tenderness, but maybe it was close.

To Jungeun, being with you felt like her first day on Earth all over again. It felt like the first patch of grass under her unclothed feet. She could never tell you so, however. Telling you would make it into something real. It would remind her that she had fallen. You were her failure.

* * *

“I have to tell you something,” she swirled her wine in her glass, blurring its crystalline sides with crimson.

“Is that the secret reason you took me here?” You chuckled and set your cutlery down beside your plate of food.

Jungeun blushed. It was true that the two of you rarely went out together. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to or didn’t ask, but the fact was that you never saw her. She was always out of town or otherwise occupied with things she never revealed to you. It didn’t bother you much, you two weren’t exclusive after all, but it did make you wonder what she thought she was doing with you. You often asked yourself if you were missing her, and if she was missing you, too.

“Maybe,” Jungeun’s fingers drew delicately over the veins in the back of your hand. A shadow clouded her glazed eyes for a moment, and it pulled a sigh out of her. “It’s two things, actually. And, I just…I thought doing it here,” among all of these lovers and spices and lonely songbirds, “was appropriate.”

“Okay, go ahead.” You tilted your head just slightly to the side. Jungeun let the gesture remind her how much you stunned her. She allowed herself to find yet another downfall in you.

“I love you,” she breathed, “I love you, and I’m leaving.”

Her voice broke then, but you weren’t sure if you had imagined it: inserted the sound as a placeholder for what feeling you hoped hid behind her voice.

“You…you’re-where? Where are you going?”

“It’s complicated.”

“No, it really isn’t.”

You’d had enough of not knowing. You were finished with whatever mystery she was drawing you in because all of that churning in your stomach wasn’t going away and neither was the sweet ring of her words in your ear:  _I love you._

“It doesn’t matter, then,” this time her voice certainly did shatter, “You’ll never see me again. That’s the end of it.”

How do you tell someone that “home” for you means the sky and neverending power and trickling ethereal light? How do you tell them that they are the reason you have to go back? Jungeun felt a welling at the base of her throat, and she asked herself if this was what love felt like.

You had ruined her, and you would never know that you were but a smudge on the ever-rotting reputation of the gods up there. Never would you know that you had clipped the wings of Cupid with your fingernails.

“I’m sorry,” you thought she might cry then.

“I’m sorry, too,” you stood from your seat, ignoring the shaky limbs where they supported you. “I…but I have to tell you so that you don’t leave here thinking something else,” you swallowed and said the four words that would weigh Olympus down into the ocean:

“I love you, too.”


End file.
